flutter / flutter/devtools

[Feature]: Add visual measuring tools, like Figma

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#9,536 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
new feature P3 screen: inspector
Dominant language
Dart
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Avg merge
6d 17h
Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Validating layouts is not a simple task, usually we need to open Figma, measure the distance between widgets there, and try to see if it matches in the app. Currently there are many hacky ways to do it:

1. Take a screenshot of the app, overlay it on Figma/Photohop, and use rulers to check alignment and sizes.
2.Take a screenshot of the app, overlay it on Figma/Photohop, and use opacity to blend the desired outcome with the screenshot, and see where they differ.
3. Take a screenshot of the app and use any tool that can count pixels to see if the values match what you want.

All of this takes time and it's cumbersome.

Currently we can see the size of a widget in the widget tree view, but that's it.

It would be really cool if the DevTools could introduce a tool like this:

Image

Image

Where we can use the mouse and keyboard to activate different kinds of measurements, from one widget to the next. I suggest you play around with Figma, pressing Alt/Option while you select and hover over components, to see how it helps to measure distances between widgets.

Obviously this will be more complicated in a real device, but for emulators it could be really useful.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the DevTools widget tree view, where widget sizes are currently shown, and review the proposed Figma-style interactions in the issue. Done means the scope and interaction details for mouse- and keyboard-based measurements between widgets are defined for emulator use.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
dart
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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